Beijing..

Let me tell you about my Beijing.

So I've been living in China for more than 4 months now. And I really, really, wanted to go to Beijing no matter what! Because when you say China, people will naturally automatically think Beijing! Plus the fact that of course it was where we had the Olympics. So when Anton mentioned a long time ago that Desi was gonna make a plan to go to Beijing, I said I'm IN easily! Because I chose to go to Xian also for the Fudan field trip and told myself at that time that whatever happens, I AM going to Beijing anyway.

So a new holiday came to Shanghai last June 14-16. I think it was the Dragon Boat Festival. Desi planned everything and we just joined in everything. We were a total of 9 people (me, Anton, Desi, Jed, Christine, Tim, Aby, Christine GBF, and Renee). Just right if you ask me since more than this number would/can spell trouble already. The "sir" that Desi is, we had meetings previous to our departure as well as quite a few number of email exchanges regarding our itinerary. Needless to say, it was exciting. You see, this was Beijing. Also, almost all of us knew each other from GBF except for Aby (who's among the Filipino group we met here in Fudan and Tim (Dutch) and Christine (French) who we usually hang out with. Tim is a classmate of Desi, Chrsitine is his girlfriend, Aby is Desi's student from Davao. Ok, did I just explain that? This was a fun group.

So we left the dorm at around 7:30 in the evening to catch our 9:58 train to Beijing. Yes, I took the train. We went to Shanghai Nan Station which is 90RMB and 40 minutes by taxi away from the dorm only to arrive there at around 8:30 and realize that our train WASN'T there. We were to depart at the Shanghai Station which is a few metro stops only from our dorm. LOL. So we decided to rush off to the nearest Metro stop at Shanghai Nan to go to Shanghai Station. We arrived just in time for boarding.

13 hours after we arrived at Beijing Station at around 12 noon the following day. While in the train, we met this English speaking local who worked for a tour agency in Beijing. He helped us fix our itinerary as well as find our way through Beijing's Metro system. See, what are the chances that you actually meet someone as kind as him in this HUGE country that is predominantly Chinese-speaking?!? So we were so happy! But we arrived at our hostel only to find out that they had problems with the rooms that we booked. So they had to transfer us to another hostel which was hassle for us in a way but I guess okay too since it was also near the Metro stop. Plus, because we were troubled by this, they helped us get discounts at our new hostel. So we got it for only 45RMB/person/night. TAKE NOTE: THIS WAS MY FIRST TIME EVER TO STAY AT A HOSTEL AND MORE SO ONE WITH A SHARED BATHROOM!

We got two rooms. One 6-bed and the other, a 4-bed room. Room assignments were:

6-bed: Desi, Aby, Chrsitine, Renee and Jed.
4-bed: me, Anton, Tim, and Christine.

Because of all the delays, we decided to just chill out through the day and check out the food street, WangFuJing and proceed to HouHai. HouHai is almost like Singapore's Clark Quey. Very nice. And oh did I tell you that I took ONE BITE of STARFISH!! IKR!!

Second day we decided to go to the Great Wall. Somewhere in QianMen Metro stop we found a tour that was only 50RMB. I was shocked. This was Great Wall we were talking about. And for 50RMB, you got to admit that this price was quite cheap! So excitedly, off we jumped on that tour bus! True enough we had the Great Wall for our first stop and it was nice! I later found out that this was not yet the amazing part of the Wall. But it amazed me already!! Don't anymore ask me about the rest of the trip since our motto for that day was that: AT THE END OF THE DAY, IT WAS JUST 50RMB!!

On the way home we passed by the Olympic Village and asked to get off that site and never join the rest of the group anymore in going back to where we found that tour. The Olympic Village was nice. We wanted to wait till they open the lights at 7:45 but it rained and the sky became so dark and it got so cold we decided to go home instead and eat Western buffet at a place near our hostel. YUMMY!! Something to make up for the lunch we had at our 50RMB tour which made me experience the feeling of eating only cucumber for lunch!! Good thing there was YangRou outside the resto!! Oh, thank heavens!!

Since the forecast said that it was gonna be rainy the next day, we decided to tweak our itinerary a little but so that the next day we spent going around The Summer Palace in the morning, Tian'An Men and Forbidden City in the afternoon, and The Silk MArket in the evening! This was definitely our longest,, most tiring day!! Especially because the weatherman was not accurate and it turned out to be really humid/hot!! It's like the sun is draining you of all your energies!! My personal favorite was the Forbidden City and of course, the 90RMB lunch of authentic Peking duck I had. They had certificates and code numbers! Our 30 minute wait to get lunch was well worth the wait I would say. Even though I am not really a duck person!!

And for our last day, we decided to go check out the Temple of Heaven where we saw the local scene. As well as the Art District of Beijing. It was pretty cool to see the locals dancing, doing exercise and what-nots. I had lots of water because.. the weather was really hot!!

We went back to the hostel around 7 in the evening to take a shower and rushed to Beijing Nan Station to catch our 9-ish train to Shanghai. Grabbed a quick dinner at the KFC in the station then boarded the train. And because the cheap sleeper were sold out already when we bought tickets, we were on hard seats going back to Shanghai. It was pretty good. Some kind of like the first class planes except the seats were hard, of course! We arrived in Shanghai the following morning.

Good bye Beijing, good bye McDonald's breakfast everyday. Now, I am once again back to Shanghai and The Bund!! Lovett.